comet
NEOWISE
The bright northern-sky comet of 2020.
C/2020 F3 NEOWISE is a long-period comet whose dust and ion tails were widely observed.
- Orbit representation
- verified fallback
- Surface
- procedural reconstruction
Reference measurements
The numbers that shape this world
- Mean radius
- 2.5 km
- Semi-major axis
- 368.475 AU
- Orbital period
- 7,073.137 Earth yearsKeplerian estimate from the catalogued semi-major axis.
- Eccentricity
- 0.999
- Inclination
- 128.94°
- Visual geometry
- irregular
Orbital character
A strongly elongated path around the Sun
NEOWISE follows a catalogued path with a 368.475 AU semi-major axis, eccentricity 0.999, and 128.94° inclination. The resulting two-body period estimate is 7,073.137 Earth years; the representation notes below state the source epoch and precision boundary used by Explore.
Catalogue context
NEOWISE among its nearest Helios peers
NEOWISE is linked with Halley, Hale–Bopp, Encke, 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, Tempel 1 inside the Helios comet selection. The grouping keeps adjacent reading coherent; it does not imply that these bodies share the same composition, origin, or present physical state.
Representation notes
What Explore is showing
A bundled frozen six-element preview preserves the documented body scope. It was not freshly re-fetched from SBDB in this build environment and must not be presented as an accurate or current ephemeris.
Reference-guided visual reconstruction based on cited mission records; no source raster is reproduced.
Provenance